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Designing Agricultural Technology for African Women Farmers: Lessons From 25 Years of Experience
Abstract
African women farmers are less likely than men to adopt improved crop varieties and management systems. This paper addresses two issues: How does gender affect technology adoption among African farmers? How does the introduction of new technologies affect women's well-being? Three conclusions come out of an extensive and critical review of the literature. First, African households are complex and heterogeneous. Second, gender roles within African households and communities cannot be simply summarized. Third, gender roles and responsibilities are dynamic; they respond to changing economic circumstances. The paper demonstrates the complexity and importance of efforts to design interventions for African women.
... This has put small farmers into a poverty trap. To address this problem, a variety of post-harvest handling techniques were introduced to farmers in different countries (Bokusheva et al., 2012;Doss, 2001;Gbénou-Sissinto et al., 2018;Kiaya, 2014;Omotilewa et al., 2018). The initiatives introduced include training and demonstration of the use of hermetic bags, metal silos, and insect pest management strategies which aimed at enhancing the storage capacity of both male and female smallholder farmers (Bokusheva et al., 2012;Helvetas, 2018;Shee et al., 2019). ...
... In addition, there is growing evidence of low levels of participation among smallholders in the adoption of collective storage practices (Owach et al., 2017). The adoption of improved postharvest practices and technology is assumed to be a social agency whereby men or women need to act independently to make their choices through gender relations in the households (Doss, 2001;Sahoo et al., 2018;Schaner, 2016). Empirical findings from recent studies show that cultural factors have a strong influence on gender roles, distribute rights and privileges, and locate the power to own, access, and manage post-harvest technologies (Helvetas, 2018). ...
... The adoption of these improved PHTs as the social enterprise has mainly been determined by gender relations as an identity of men and women (Doss, 2001;Sahoo et al., 2018). In this respect, some roles and responsibilities related to post-harvest management (PHM) are dominated by women in some societies and by men in other societies. ...
Post-harvest loss is a historical challenge affecting some of agricultural products including maize which is a vital cereal crop in Tanzania. Enhanced knowledge and training on the use of metal silo and hermetic bags have been among the initiatives introduced to address post-harvest losses. This paper, therefore, assesses the effects of socio-cultural factors on the gendered decision-making process in the adoption of improved maize storage technologies. The paper looks at the role of bargaining power, task division and implications for enhancing the socio-economic status of farming households. The study was cross-sectional and used a multistage sampling method to select villages and respondents in each district. Data were collected through questionnaires, focus groups and key informant interviews. Logistic regression and descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data gathered. The findings revealed that awareness, farming experience, age and beliefs were the key socio-cultural factors that made men and women adopt better storage technologies. The findings further revealed that the division of tasks between gender-specific households was not statistically significant with respect to the adoption of improved maize storage technologies. These findings imply that there is no need for gender mainstreaming in task division and gender-sensitive technologies, even among gender-diverse farmers from diverse socio-cultural communities. Thus, awareness programs need to be expanded and adopt joint decisions through farming households so as to play a key role in balancing bargaining power.
... Female empowerment is important in its own right, but in addition it can also be a key leverage point towards other social welfare goals such as improved nutrition and health (Hoddinott and Haddad 1995;Debela et al. 2021). Gender roles and responsibilities tend to change with economic circumstances, which in rural areas includes the adoption of new agricultural technologies and crops (Doss 2001;Kaaria and Ashby 2000;Njuki et al. 2011). Here, we analyze how the adoption and cultivation of oil palm is associated with gender roles in farming households in Indonesia. ...
... One mechanism is through decision-making on farming, which can differ between crops. Especially in Africa, it is often assumed that food crop production is under the responsibility of women, whereas cash crop production is typically considered a male domain (Doss 2001;Njuki et al. 2011;Fischer and Qaim 2012;Chiputwa and Qaim 2016), although these gender roles are more flexible in practice (Doss 2002). Similar gendered responsibilities are also observed in other parts of the world (von Braun and Kennedy 1994; Kaaria and Ashby 2000;Doss and Quisumbing 2020). ...
... While household income effects of oil palm cultivation were analyzed in previous studies, we are not aware of previous work that analyzed implications for gender roles and female decision-making power with quantitative data and methods. When households transition from food crop to cash crop production, women often lose their control over income and productive resources (von Braun and Kennedy 1994;Doss 2001;Fischer and Qaim 2012). However, in Jambi many households already grew rubber, also a cash crop, before adopting oil palm, so this direct gender effect is of lower relevance in the local context. ...
Oil palm is one of the fastest expanding crops in tropical regions, leading to massive land-use changes and far-reaching social implications. In Indonesia, much of the oil palm land is cultivated by smallholder farmers. While household income effects of oil palm cultivation were analyzed in previous studies, effects on intra-household gender roles are not yet well understood. Here, we use sex-disaggregated survey data from farm households in Sumatra to examine how oil palm cultivation-in comparison to cultivating traditional crops-is associated with women's and men's time allocation and decision-making power. Women in oil palm cultivating households spend much less time in farming and more time for household chores and leisure than women in households only cultivating traditional crops. These differences increase with the share of the farm area under oil palm, as oil palm requires less labor than traditional crops. While a reduction in women's workload can have positive social effects, lower involvement in farming can also be associated with a loss in female autonomy. Indeed, our data suggest that oil palm cultivation is associated with women having less decision-making power in terms of farm management and income control. These insights can help to design policies for more gender-equitable rural development.
... Previous literature suggests that the adoption of agricultural technology in developing economy countries offers numerous benefits on both an individual and societal level. Farming technology can improve the well-being and quality of life for traditional farmers (Doss, 2001). This is largely due to the fact that these technologies can enhance agricultural production quality and quantity, and in return, reduce poverty among farmers (Alene & Coulibaly, 2009;Muzari, Gatsi, & Muvhunzi, 2012). ...
... Achieving the balance between productive agricultural enterprise and efficient environmental protection sustainability is essential to making the agriculture sector economically viable (Yadav et al., 2013). It is believed that using farming machinery can improve the farmer's livelihoods since farming machinery helps increase agricultural productivity and eventually improves the millions of poor farm households by adding more annual income to each farming family (Doss, 2001). Farming machinery can improve the financial situation for the rural communities by incentivizing young people to remain involved in agriculture since rural out-migration is particularly popular among young people, who appear to be less interested in engaging in farming as a livelihood pursuit. ...
Widespread adoption of agricultural machinery for developing economy countries is commonly regarded as a fundamental component of pro-poor growth and sustainable intensification. Mechanized farming can also improve perceptions of farming and mitigate rural out migration. However, many traditional farmers do not have access to machinery and/or the machinery is cost prohibitive. This study applies the systems engineering approach to identify human-systems integration (HSI) solutions in agricultural practices to more effectively adapt technologies to satisfy traditional farmers’ needs. A treatment control study was conducted on 36 farms in Sudan, Africa, over three farming seasons: 2019 (baseline), 2020, and 2021. The treatment group farmers (N = 6) were provided with agricultural machinery (i.e., tractor, cultivator, planter, and harvester), fuel for the machinery, and training to use the machinery. Farmers were interviewed at the beginning of the study, and then after each planting and harvesting season during the study.
Findings show that the most significant barriers for technology adoption were culture, security, and maintenance costs. However, they also reported that the most significant challenges in their nonmechanized farming practices were related to labor, safety, and profit margins, all of which could be addressed with machinery. Moreover, the results show that all farmers had similar net-profits in 2019, when farming without machinery, while mechanized farming yielded significantly higher net-profits ($16.61 per acre more in 2020 and $27.10 per acre more in 2021).
Farmers also provided needs and rationales of various design options in tractors and attachments. The findings of this dissertation suggest that, despite the initial resistance to using agricultural machinery, the farmers were pleased by their experience after using farming machinery and expressed an even more accepting attitude from their children towards this new farming process.
These results demonstrate the importance of developing effective solutions for integrating farming technology into rural farming practices in developing economy countries. More broadly, this study can be used as an HSI framework for identifying design needs and integrating technology into users' lifestyle. The results presented in this dissertation provide a quantified difference between farming with and without machinery, which can provide a financial basis for purchasing and borrowing models, machinery design requirements, and educational value to farmers. Further, the financial values and design requirements can help inform farmers regarding expected costs, returns, and payoffs from tractor adoption. Manufacturers and policy makers can utilize this to promote technology adoption more effectively to farmers in developing economy countries.
... Challenges faced by women are aggravated by traditional norms and cultural barriers [5] such as gendered division of labour, which limits women's physical mobility and decision making at household and community levels [6,7] Additionally, women often have limited access to agricultural inputs, latest agricultural technologies [8], including technologies for mitigating and adapting to the negative impacts of climate change [9,10], as well as climate forecast information [11]. These constraints contribute to the widening gender gap and lower agricultural productivity by women [4,12]. ...
... Women's gendered climatic vulnerability has been demonstrated during several extreme climate events since the beginning of the 21st century [5,13,14]. In Zimbabwe, a study conducted by [15] found that the 1994-1995 droughts adversely affected the body mass of women more than men. ...
This study explored legume production by female and men smallholder farmers in Chipata, in a changing climate context. The study objectives were to (i) find out how men and women smallholder legume farmers in Chipata understand climate variability, (ii) investigate how climate variability affects smallholder legume farmers and (iii) identify the different challenges faced by womenfemale and men legume farmers in Chipata. Interviews were conducted with 86 male and 86 female legume farmers selected using stratified random sampling. Purposive sampling was used to select nine key informants and focus group discussants. Qualitative data were analysed using content analysis, while quantitative data were analysed through statistical tests. About half the men and women perceived that climate change in Chipata manifested through a shorter rainy season, late start of rainy season, intra-seasonal droughts and heavy downpours. Some men (34.9%) and women (23.3%) reported that heavy downpours caused common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) flowers to drop off. About 41% of the men farmers interviewed and 23.3% of the women reported witch weed (Striga asiaticapa) on their groundnuts (Arachis hypogaea) fields after periods of heavy rainfall. The men discussants complained that soya bean (Glycine max) fields became waterlogged after prolonged heavy rains, which delayed weeding. Women farmers had challenges accessing hybrid legume seed, inoculants and marketing legumes. Men’s challenges were low market prices for soya beans. The study recommends agricultural interventions should focus on climate-smart legume seed multiplication and certification among legume farmers and promotion of local seed-sharing networks to enhance seed diversity.
... In the instrumental agency indicators, work balance had the highest censored headcount ratio of 25 % for women in dual households, while ownership of land and other assets had the lowest headcount ratio. Women who have ownership and control of land and other assets are (Doss et al., 2018;Doss, 2001;Rola-Rubzen et al., 2020). This could be attributed to the vulnerability women have in losing land they have invested in if men want to take over or in case of their husband's death or divorce. ...
... Respondent's occupation had a significant positive and significant influence on WTP, implying that women who have a non-farm occupation, were more likely to pay a higher bid for IPM packages than those without. This may be because women earning their income have the freedom to make decisions in acquiring improved technologies that will benefit them as demonstrated in previous similar studies (Alem et al., 2020;Doss, 2001). ...
... These are revealed not only in the division of labour and resources between women and men, but also in ideas and representations -the ascribing to women and men of different abilities, attitudes, desires, personality traits, behaviour patterns, and so on (Agarwal, 1997). Gender relations determine household security, well-being of the family, and agricultural production and many other aspects of rural life (Doss, 2001;Das and Mishra, 2018).In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), especially in the rural areas, patriarchy is still dominant, guiding the way of life and behaviour of the people (Izugbara, 2005;Lecouteres and Wuyts, 2017). Gender norms, stereotypes and beliefs with bias against women are put in place to control and confine them (Godsil et al., 2016). ...
... Similarly, women's low adoption of Money Maker Hip Pump in Central Kenya and manual pumps in Zimbabwe was due to the fact that the women 'felt exposed' when operating the above-ground models of manual pumps, among other reasons (Njuki, et al, 2014).Therefore, programmes that seek to introduce new technologies need to take into account the socio-cultural and religious factors influencing gender considerations in the design and implementation. This was attested to by Doss (2001) who noted the enormous diversity and complexity between different African villages, not to talk of countries, in designing technology for African female farmers. ...
... A major reason for this is that African women play an engine role in farm work: they are responsible for ensuring household food security and taking care of other household reproductive matters (Meinzen-Dick et al. 2010). Although women play a crucial role in improving food and nutritional security in Africa, their contribution to agricultural production and the specific gender division of labour in household, farm and nonfarm activities is not uniform across countries and cultures (Doss 2001). Given women's crucial role in agriculture and family wellbeing, it is pertinent to understand the barriers women face in raising productivity to increase food security at the household and national levels. ...
... These constraints include limited access to land, livestock and other assets; limited access to education, health care, markets and extension services; and other subtle forms of social and cultural inequality 3 (Doss & Morris 2001;Quisumbing 1995;World Bank 2001). Furthermore, women face challenges related to weaker land tenure security, poorer land quality, little access to credit and reduced opportunities to participate in agricultural training and extension opportunities due to other household demands (Doss 2001;Doss & Morris 2001). ...
... Different women have different preferences and needs for adaptation given their gendered roles within the household. Studies based on sex-disaggregated data have shown that when gendered differences are not taken into consideration in the technology design process or when they are introduced to agricultural households, which they often are not, climate-smart technologies do not work well for them (Doss 2001;Beuchelt and Badstue 2013;Bryan et al. 2018, 418;FAO and CARE 2019). ...
... 50), in the absence of attention to context and lack of awareness of users' needs and habits, some eco-technologies tend to be ignored by the people on the receiving end (Gay-Antaki 2020; Wang and Corson 2015). As a result, the literature on gender-transformative adaptation indicates that it is important to ensure that perceptions of performance or service-level improvements are shared by both the project designers and beneficiaries from the outset, keeping in mind the intersecting dimensions of power among men and women (Doss 2001;Beuchelt and Badstue 2013;Bryan et al. 2018;Carr et al. 2016). ...
The global care crisis is being exacerbated by the global climate emergency, with interlocking impacts that threaten lives and livelihoods in all parts of the world. These impacts are particularly severe among rural livelihoods in low-income countries. Climate change intensifies the work involved in caring for people, animals, plants, and places. It reduces the availability and quality of public services in marginalized communities and directly compounds the unfair distribution of unpaid care work that sustains gender inequality.
Yet the intersections of climate change and care work have been overlooked in the development literature. Strategies for climate mitigation and adaptation have paid relatively little attention to how care work is affected by climate impacts, nor have they considered whether interventions improve or intensify the situation of carers. Instead, when designing “gender-sensitive” climate actions, the focus has been largely on women’s economic empowerment as opposed to alleviating or transforming existing distributions of care work.
The aim of this report is to fill a knowledge gap by examining the points of interaction between climate change impacts and the amount, distribution, and conditions of unpaid care work. We focus on care workers rather than those who are cared for, while stressing the relational nature of care and acknowledging that carers too require care.
... Agricultural research for development (AR4D) interventions and their targeting strategies tend to focus on technical-technological issues such as crop genetic improvement, resource use efficiency, or improved pest and disease management which respond to well-established research that highlights the role of AR4D in food security and poverty alleviation [3,4]. However, sociocultural, political, economic, and agroecological contexts affect farmers' interactions with agricultural research and technology development shaping the adoption and the distributional effects of AR4D interventions [5][6][7][8][9]. ...
... For decades, research has evidenced that gender roles and stereotypes influence agricultural technology uptake and innovation processes-see for instance [1,6,[10][11][12][13][14]. Furthermore, recent research examining the linkages between agricultural innovation, agency, and gender norms emphasizes the relevance of social norms as part of the enabling-or disabling-context for planned interventions in agriculture and natural resource management [15][16][17]. ...
The importance of gender norms in agricultural innovation processes has been recognized. However, the operational integration of these normative issues into the innovation strategies of agricultural interventions remains challenging. This article advances a replicable, integrative research approach that captures key local conditions to inform the design and targeting of gender-inclusive interventions. We focus on the gender climate across multiple contexts to add to the limited indicators available for assessing gender norms at scale. The notion of gender climate refers to the socially constituted rules that prescribe men’s and women’s behaviour in a specific geographic location—with some being more restrictive and others more relaxed. We examine the gender climate of 70 villages across 13 countries where agriculture is an important livelihood. Based on data from the GENNOVATE initiative we use multivariate methods to identify three principal components: ‘Gender Climate’, ‘Opportunity’ and ‘Connectivity’. Pairwise correlation and variance partitioning analyses investigate the linkages between components. Our findings evidence that favourable economic or infrastructure conditions do not necessarily correlate with favourable gender normative conditions. Drawing from two case-study villages from Nepal, we highlight opportunities for agricultural research for development interventions. Overall, our approach allows to integrate local knowledge about gender norms and other local conditions into the planning and targeting strategies for agricultural innovation.
... This is an entry point to understand how men and women manage access to the resources required. But as Kabeer (1994) and Doss (2001) have noted, roles are fluid and dynamic. So, we also explore how roles influence gender relations in decision making and negotiation for access to and use of resources needed for seed production, and how women manage practical and strategic needs through individual or group multiplication activities. ...
Interest is growing for the development of inclusive seed production models. However, there is limited understanding of gender-based roles and constraints and how these might influence gender relations in seed production. Through a case study on sweetpotato seed production in Lake Zone Tanzania, this article examines men’s and women’s roles in seed production with the introduction of specialized seed practices and a commercial orientation. The study uses data from 17 field-based plot observations and eight sex disaggregated focus group discussions (FGDs) with 33 (51% women and 48% men) decentralized vine multipliers (DVMs). Participatory, gender-based analytical tools were used to obtain an in-depth understanding of gender dimensions and implications of new seed production practices, the resources required and access to those resources. Our findings show that men and women have complementary roles in specialized seed production, and that men increased their involvement in production and commercialization, especially when larger monetary inputs and transactions took place. Women gained new tangible (income) and intangible (knowledge) assets, which enhanced their community status. Women’s contributions to household income became more visible. In conclusion male-takeover did not take place. There were changes in the perceptions around sweetpotato production and gender relations. As women’s contributions to household income became more visible, they were able to negotiate with their husbands on access to key resources to maintain this household revenue stream. We discuss how the new knowledge and skills related to seed production enhanced women’s status in the community. These dynamics initiated changes in gender relations and challenged prevailing community perceptions on gender roles.
... In introducing new technologies and practices to farmers, researchers and extension agents must first understand the potential impact these technologies will have in the community among both men and women (Doss 2001). A better understanding of these differentiated impacts can be informed by a better understanding of how roles in the value chain differ, including gendered differences in roles (Rubin and Manfre 2014). ...
... The evidence on labor consequences is conflicting. Studying these effects is crucial since technological innovations target certain crops and professions, which affect men and women in various ways (Doss, 2001). According to (Daum et al., 2018), despite the enlargement of the study area, automated tillage reduced women's labor due to increased insect control, the use of livestock assistance, and the use of herbicides during soil preparation and cleaning. ...
Governments agencies, development specialists, and private businesses have introduced agricultural mechanization as a critical priority throughout Africa. However, because state-led mechanization efforts in the past have failed, industrialization has been largely ignored in the literature. Popular theories like "mechanization causes to unemployment" have arisen in this empirically deficient environment. nine of these claims are examined, and it turns out that the majority of them are either backed by little or no evidence. Thus, they can be referred to as "myths." The potential benefit of agricultural automation in Africa to ensure global food security may be undermined by such fallacies, which have an impact on policies and initiatives. We suggest a research program with the goal of settling disputes and promoting evidence-based regulations for sustainable and equitable agricultural mechanization.
... This preference was justified by the fact that female farmers were freer to discuss problems with female agents, who were better able to accommodate their time preferences for meetings than male agents. This reinforces the confidence that increasing the proportion of female agents in agricultural technology diffusion will effectively contribute to increase the proportion of female farmers having access to TIK, reducing gender inequalities in technology diffusion and improving technology adoption (Doss, 2001;Quisumbing and Pandolfelli, 2009). ...
This paper identifies some ways to effectively transfer complex and gender-biased technology information and knowledge (TIK) to both men and women by analyzing the diffusion of Smart-valleys technology in West-Africa. ANOVA and Fisher's exact tests were applied to data collected from 1120 lowland rice farmers in West Africa. Results confirm the general gender inequality in TIK communication with male farmers having more access to Smart-valleys TIK than female lowland farmers. Only few female communicators were used in Smart-valleys TIK transfer even if they were found to be as efficient as men at communicating and teaching. However, opposite results obtained in Togo in particular reveal that it is possible to ensure gender equality in agricultural TIK communication, even in case of complex and gender-bias technologies , if specific gender mainstreaming and gender equity actions are undertaken during technology diffusion. Women-to-women communication improved female farmers access to Smart-valleys TIK confirming that involving female communicators will reduce gender inequality in TIK diffusion. On-farm demonstration was identified as the most effective approach, not only in Smart-valleys TIK communication, but also in ensuring gender equity in access of both male and female farmers to the TIK. Therefore, on-farm demonstration combined with oral explanations should be adopted as the main approach in complex and gender-biased technologies diffusion in general, and in Smart-valleys diffusion in particular.
... However, smallholder farmers are heterogeneous in their resource endowment and social capital. Gender is one of the elements where this diversity emanates and creates unbalanced benefits from the dissemination of improved agricultural technologies (Doss, 2001;Ndiritu et al., 2014). ...
Enhancing farmers' access to improved seeds is essential to increase productivity and ensure food security in the Global South. However, for many socially marginalized groups, seed access is constrained by the weak institutions governing the input supply chains and the dissemination of information. Using cross-sectional survey data collected from 1,088 farming households in three major wheat-growing regional states of Ethiopia in 2021, this paper assesses empirically how participation in different socioeconomic institutions by men and women farmers shapes their access to and acquisition of seed of improved wheat varieties. The results show that the seed market in the study area is largely informal, where the recycling of wheat seeds from the previous season is a common practice among both male- and female-headed households. However, a significant difference exists between male- and female-headed households regarding patterns of varietal use, with male farmers growing newer wheat varieties more frequently. Men are also more active than women in local social and economic institutions, and their participation is positively associated with the adoption of new wheat varieties. Thus, strengthening the local social and economic institutions and supporting equitable participation of both male- and female-headed households in these institutions could facilitate the diffusion of quality seeds of improved and recently released wheat varieties in countries where the informal seed system plays a major role in seed acquisition.
... For instance, some agroecological practices are labour-intensive, and the corresponding work could be carried out disproportionately by vulnerable individuals. In line with principle 2 on 'input reduction', studies have found that without herbicides, the labour burden for the household could increase by requiring more weeding, which is usually carried out by women and girls 36 . Consequently, in low-income households, mothers may even have less time to attribute to care practices, especially during peaks of agricultural activity 20 that require intense physical activity, which in turn may increase their nutritional requirements and affect their nutritional status. ...
The principles of agroecology do not explicitly state a link with nutrition. Yet, we argue that among them, input reduction, biodiversity, economic diversification, social values and diets, fairness, connectivity and participation are directly linked to nutrition. Nutrition can serve as a critical outcome and driver of agroecological practices and can drive transformative change across the food system. Synergies between agroecology and nutrition are explored in this Perspective, with a view towards developing a framework to transform agroecology for improved nutrition.
... The present discourse also shows that good quality produce may be obtained from sack gardening. For the authors of [19,20] that justified the relevancy of home consumption through the production of most of the food we consume, sack gardening could allow households to have easy access to healthy and safe products. Moreover, the results show that households practice sack gardening mainly for home consumption and not for commercialization. ...
Understanding the perception of sack gardening technology is important in order to better support the adoption of sack gardening in households, given the nutritional role vegetables play. This notwithstanding, research has not yet been carried out to understand the stakeholders’ perception of sack gardening technology in the zones of Bougouni and Koutiala, where sack gardening technology was introduced under the Africa Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation (Africa-RISING) project. This study assessed the perception of farm households on sack gardening technology and specifically to understand to what extent this innovation responds to household needs. Q-methodology was used to identify rural household’s viewpoints and principal component analysis (PCA) was performed to compare stakeholders’ opinion typologies to discourses retained by Q-method results. Focus group discussions were used to identify the statements used for the q-set in the individual surveys. Our findings showed three factors or discourses which reflected the stakeholders’ viewpoints. A nutritional role, the role of making vegetables available for household consumption and the role of environment protection, specifically soil protection, were indicated in the stakeholders’ opinions. The understanding of the different discourses retained provides insights that can be used to design public and private interventions to support the usage of the technology in households or the adoption of this technology.
... Empirically, studies show how female-headed households have poorer access to labour resources (Andersson Djurfeldt, 2018a) and also how reproductive care burdens affect women's possibilities for participating in agricultural production (Andersson Djurfeldt, Dzanku, & Isinika, 2018;Andersson Djurfeldt, Hillbom, et al., 2018). Lacking extension services (Kilic et al., 2015) and lower technology uptake (Doss, 2001;Doss & Morris, 2001;Quisumbing & Pandolfelli, 2010) can also be linked to lower productivity among female farmers. In turn, production differentials among male and female farmers lead to a relative gender gap in commercialisation potential (see Andersson Djurfeldt, 2018b;Lambrecht, 2016). ...
Commercial smallholder production is touted as a mechanism for reducing rural poverty and transforming African agriculture. In line with this ideology, the Ghanaian state introduced two policies to provide incentives for commercial food and tree crop cultivation among smallholder farmers. Policy implementation is done in a blanket manner without considerations of gendered differences in agricultural asset distribution, such as land, and the particular sociocultural opportunities and constraints men and women face in undertaking commercial production. The paper investigates these gendered trajectories using a qualitative methodology. Results reveal the varied nature of women's constraints and related levels of vulnerability. Although native women are structurally disadvantaged in commercial food crop production, tree crop commercialisation presents an opportunity for them to reclaim dormant land rights safeguarded by their male kin. These results provide perspective for considering gender‐sensitive agricultural incentives as well as potential for leveraging on the tree crop sector for attaining gender neutrality.
... However, married women make up a large portion of women in SSA, living households as 'man-headed' (Buvinic and Gupta, 1997). So gender-sensitive programs need to effectively target married women as well as woman household heads, addressing intrahousehold power dynamics and differences between men's and women's preferences (Doss, 2001;Doss et al., 2018;Rola & Rubzen et al., 2020). ...
... The willingness to produce agricultural products is higher than that of women. Doss (60) analyzed the impact of gender on improving crop varieties and management systems in African countries, and concluded that males were more inclined to choose superior varieties than females in selecting varieties. Kishor (61) selected 325 men and 109 women in Nepal to study pesticide use knowledge and behavior, and found that Frontiers in Public Health frontiersin.org . ...
China's public health emergency COVID-19 has brought great challenges to food safety. Among them, the quality and safety of agricultural products under the normalization of the COVID-19 prevention and control has become a hot issue of general concern. This study attempts to reveal the driving factors and mechanisms of farmers' green production behavior. The empirical research by collecting 673 sample data shows that: individual characteristics of farmers, government guiding factors, an industrial organization promoting factors, and market adjustment factors have a positive driving effect on farmers' green production behavior. And farmers' green production behavior has a positive influence on the quality and safety of agricultural products. Farmers' green production behavior plays an intermediary role between the quality and safety of agricultural products and individual characteristics of farmers, government guidance factors, industrial organization promotion factors, and market regulation factors. The results of the study have guiding significance for ensuring the quality and safety of agricultural products, promoting ecological environmental protection, and sustainable agricultural development under the normalization of COVID-19 prevention and control.
... Having an outsider company to dictate seed distribution and ownership sound strange for some of them. These reasons make women farmers in Africa less likely than men to adopt improved crop varieties (Doss, 2001). However, in other countries like Bangladesh, a lack of credit access was the main reasons women farmers did not adopt high-yielding varieties (Rashid et al., 2004). ...
Purpose: Past studies generally agree that gender-based socio-economic constraints in the agricultural sector negatively affect the growth of the agricultural sector in Ghana and other African countries. The government statistics showed that the Upper East Region of Ghana experienced a substantial decline in productivity, but few studies have clarified what socio-economic factors actually contributed to this decline. This study attempts to identify these factors and the extent to which these factors affect women farmers. Methodology: We conducted a preliminary field survey in Ghana among farmers and government officials and identified several possible factors, such as poor access to tractor services and improved seeds, the patriarchal traditional land tenure system, insufficient credit availability, limited extension services and lower fertilizer usage. On the basis of our preliminary survey, we designed a questionnaire to gain insights into local productivity and women’s roles. We selected ten farming communities in Garu and Tempane districts of the Upper East Region. Through purposive sampling, we distributed the questionnaire among 14 smallholder women rice farmers randomly from each community (a total of 140 respondents). We obtained valid answers from all. Findings: The results showed that women rice farmers identified the following factors that had inhibited their production activities: obtaining credit from financial institutions (95%), the limited availability of extension services (85%), the high cost of fertilizer (78%), poor accessibility to certified seeds (74%), patriarchal land tenure system (63%) and poor access to tractor service (59%). We then conducted a multiple regression analysis and found that respondents’ education, rice farming experience and income significantly influenced how they identified these constraints. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: Agricultural productivity has been largely framed within a context of agricultural science, breeding, or food security, but not so much within a context of gender studies. In many rural areas of northern Ghana, women remain invisible, inaccessible and marginal in terms of policy support, scholarly investigation, and socio-economic equity; yet they are the very backbone of Ghana’s agricultural economy. This paper offers locally ground insights as a result of long-term field experience that allowed us to reach many of these marginalized local farmers. Whereas abortion and pro-life choice can be some of the on-going concerns for women in developed countries, local farmers in our study area share with us somewhat different and unique insights on how gender equity can be interconnected to food productivity.
... Women and men differed in their preferences for FNS interventions, but these differences do not suggest that any interventions are of exclusive interest to one group. Our study reflects findings from other smallholder contexts that associate family diets and health with women's responsibilities (35,36). For example, women showed greater interest in cooking demonstrations and WASH interventions than men; instead, men were relatively more interested in cash crop trainings and value addition through storage and preservation. ...
Background
Severe food and nutrition insecurity persist in Madagascar. The Atsimo Atsinanana region is among the most affected areas due to elevated poverty rates and low levels of resilience to frequent shocks. Implementing food and nutrition security (FNS) interventions could help to improve this situation, but to be effective and sustainable, intervention packages must fit the local context.
Objective
To identify locally suitable options, this study assesses the perceptions of local communities in rural Atsimo Atsinanana toward a range of FNS intervention options.
Methods
We held twelve gender-disaggregated workshops with 80 prospective beneficiaries of an FNS project, from both inland and coastal parts of the region. Preferences were elicited for 14 potential FNS interventions. Next, through participatory ex-ante impact assessment, participants ranked eight impact criteria and individually estimated expected impacts of all intervention options on these criteria.
Results
Overall, participants preferred interventions targeting on-farm crop, vegetable, and livestock production. Income and food self-sufficiency were ranked as the highest intervention priorities. However, intervention preferences differed by gender and geographical location. While preferences for interventions targeting dietary habits were weak across genders, women had relatively stronger preferences for these interventions than men. This shows that collecting gender-disaggregated preferences can enable more gender-sensitive choice of interventions. Preferences also reflected local livelihoods, as more market-oriented coastal sites showed stronger interest in income generation than more subsistence-oriented inland sites. The ex-ante impact assessments highlight both positive and negative expectations for most interventions, with increased labor burden being the most prominent negative impact overall.
Conclusions
The findings suggest that participatory, multi-dimensional impact assessments before project implementation can support development stakeholders in tailoring intervention packages, considering (i) local and gendered preferences; and (ii) trade-offs between different development objectives.
... Household members differ along a diversity of dimensions, including their age, their gender and status within the household (Becker, 1996;Guyer & Peters, 1987;Tsikata & Dede-Esi, 2009). They are also entitled to different endowments and access to productive resources (Becker, 1996;Kazianga & Wahhaj, 2013;van den Bold et al., 2015) and exhibit diverging preferences (Doss, 2001a(Doss, , 2001b. ...
To end hunger and increase food security, substantial investments will be required. In sub-Saharan Africa, smallholder agricultural households have a major role to play. However, finding the right instruments to stimulate agricultural growth at the household level requires an accurate understanding of agrarian households behaviour. This thesis aimed to contribute to a better understanding of agrarian households, focusing on the institutional conditions shaping cooperation within polygynous households. Indeed, polygynous households are widespread in African societies, but their specific features are relatively neglected in the agricultural development literature. Moreover, the theory of collective action has, so far, been applied at the community-level, but rarely at the intra-household level. To address this knowledge gap, case studies of two ethnic communities, the Fulani and the Mossi, were conducted. The research explored the institutional arrangements shaping the allocation of resources within polygynous households and examined the structural conditions under which cooperation occurs. The second chapter of this thesis reviews the discourse on agricultural households behaviour. Reviewing the empirical evidence, the chapter examines the adequacy of existing economic conceptualisations of agricultural households and their generalisability to West-African settings. Drawing on insights from anthropology and feminist perspectives, the chapter highlights the shortcomings of conventional household models, and the failure to consider gender and intergenerational relations of production. The third chapter analyses the challenges underlying cooperation in agricultural households. The chapter uncovers the contractual arrangements shaping the allocation of resources for food production. Drawing on the natural resource management literature, the chapter examines how households members characteristics, including their socially accepted roles and responsibilities, shape their incentive structures and determine resource pooling. Chapter 4 examines an essential determinant of collective action: trust. The chapter investigates the correlation between trust and productive and reproductive activities. The chapter makes an innovative methodological contribution to the study of cooperation, applying an experimental trust game to co-wives in polygynous households. The critical review of the economic literature challenges the existing representations of agrarian households in sub-Saharan Africa. The review calls for a redefinition of the units of production and for cautious assessment of conventional economic theories. The review recommends a framework that encompasses the complexities and diversity of behaviour in agrarian households. Integrating theories from feminist and anthropological literature can support this endeavour. Chapter 3 reveals that the contractual arrangements embedded in the rules and norms defining socially-accepted behaviour, influence the patterns of intrahousehold resource mobilisation and the likelihood of cooperation among household members. Agricultural household members were found to pool, exchange or split resources based on their roles and positions within the household arena. Implicit monitoring and sanction systems were identified, which shape the incentive structures of agrarian household member and determine whether cooperation will occur. The final chapter revealed that trust can mediate cooperation between co-wives, depending on the nature of the activity. No correlation was found between trust and co-wives likelihood to pool labour on individual plots. However, a strong correlation was identified between trust among co-wives and income pooling for food purchase, highlighting the importance of uncertainty and of existing norms on the outcomes of cooperation in agricultural households. The thesis concludes that collective action in polygynous agrarian households does not occur in a vacuum. Rather, collective action is the outcome of several processes and mechanisms. Policymakers should be aware of these internal arrangements, and their implications for intra-household resource allocation. The success of agricultural policies depends on these considerations.
... Documentation of women's participation in farming in Africa has been extensive and builds upon Boserup's (1970) groundbreaking work in 1970 detailing their economic contribution to farming communities. Much of the literature since that study has focused on the particulars of production, and women's access to land and other resources that make agricultural production and participation in value chains possible (access to credit, technology, information, training, etc.) (Doss, 2001(Doss, , 2002(Doss, , 2013Von Braun and Webb, 1989). Additionally, studies on gender and agriculture globally have exposed how cultural norms and institutions often exclude women from participating or benefitting from market production (Deere, 2010;Deere and Doss, 2006;Deere et al., 2013;Meinzen-Dick et al., 2014, Quisumbing et al., 2015. ...
Traditionally, sweetpotato is a woman's crop grown primarily for food in Mozambique. With the introduction of Vitamin A rich varieties, efforts were made to commercialize the crop. This study assessed the effects of this commercialization on women producers. Findings indicate that though women devoted more land to sweetpotato, men got higher yields, sold more and obtained better prices. Nonetheless, women dominated the roots value chain and increased their participation in markets. The more lucrative sweetpotato vine chain was dominated by men (75% men), as the resources and skills required to engage in this activity were a significant challenge for women. Women perceived that sweetpotato commercialization increased their ability to make production decisions, though it has not resulted in any changes in ownership of resources. Women and men both noted a subtle change in norms. Men for example perceived that their ability to make decisions had reduced, while women noted that they had taken on more leadership positions locally. These changes might be attributed to the role played by project implementors who encouraged men to allow their spouses to engage more in commercial activities. Whilst women faced challenges related to literacy, market entry and access to resources, they valued the experience obtained in improving their entrepreneurial skills. Future commercialization initiatives should work on linking women to business services and building stronger farmer-processor linkages. Efforts to sensitize men about the benefits of women's engagement in business showed some impact and should be included in further work on crop commercialization.
... Many attempts to introduce new crops or technologies have been less successful than anticipated because policymakers did not sufficiently consider the responsibilities of different household members (Alderman, Chiappori, Haddad, Hoddinott, & Kanbur, 1995). Often the husbandwith most power and access to resources, has been able to take the initial advantages of the innovation (Doss, 2001). Even technologies specifically designed for women are taken over by men if women are not powerful enough (Von Braun & Webb, 1989). ...
p>As many African countries promote commercial agricultural production, it is important to understand how this strategy influences the intra-household balance of power. Commercial crops are traditionally considered the domain of men, and women empowerment may suffer. We use a quasi-experimental design to address the relation between commercial production and women’s voice within the household in rural Uganda. We compare empowerment in households in an area targeted by a large program stimulating rice as a non-traditional cash crop with similar households elsewhere using double robust regression methods. We conclude that the commercialisation program had a significant negative effect on women empowerment in production and women’s control over income, while men’s empowerment in those domains increased. We find only weak effects for social empowerment. Based on these results, we recommend that policies and programs to stimulate commercial agricultural production among smallholder include a strong gender component.</p
... Our review was focused on distributions of impacts among rural households, but it is important to note that impact differentiation can also occur within households, for instance when labour burdens disproportionally befall female household members (Mullins et al. 1996;Doss 2001). The studies identified within the limits of our search considered households mostly as homogeneous units, although a few of the selected studies pointed out that female farmers tended to be poorer than male farmers within each of the recognized welfare classes (Lodin et al. 2014;Van Vugt et al. 2018;Franke et al. 2019). ...
With many of the world’s poor engaged in agriculture, agricultural development programmes often aim to improve livelihoods through improved farming practices. Research on the impacts of agricultural technology interventions is dominated by comparisons of adopters and non-adopters. By contrast, in this literature study, we critically review how technology evaluation studies assess differentiated impacts in smallholder farming communities. We searched systematically for studies which present agricultural technology impacts disaggregated for poor and relatively better-off users (adopters). The major findings of our systematic review are as follows: (1) The number of studies that assessed impact differentiation was startlingly small: we were able to identify only 85, among which only 24 presented empirical findings. (2) These studies confirm an expected trend: absolute benefits are larger for the better-off, and large relative benefits among the poor are mostly due to meagre baseline performance. (3) Households are primarily considered as independent entities, rather than as connected with others directly or indirectly, via markets or common resource pools. (4) Explanations for impact differentiation are mainly sought in existing distributions of structural household characteristics. We collated the explanations provided in the selected studies across a nested hierarchy: the field, the farm or household, and households interacting at the farming system level. We also consider impact differentiation over time. With this, we provide a structured overview of potential drivers of differentiation, to guide future research for development towards explicitly recognizing the poor among the poor, acknowledging unequal impacts, aiming to avoid negative consequences, and mitigating them where they occur.
... We used STATA's 'teffects ipwra' command to produce doubly robust estimators.7 We used STATA's 'tebalance overid' command, and the test statistics accepted the null hypothesis with a p-value of 0.877 and 0.569 for the EJ and NG project, respectively. ...
Background
This study examined the effect of linking small-scale women farmers to markets, referred to as community marketing, and homestead food production extension services in two districts of rural Bangladesh.
Method
We particularly focused on identifying the relationship between treatment and food security, monthly expenditure patterns, and food production and marketing by adopting a doubly robust method that mediated bias from project site selection and potential misspecification of the postulated outcome or treatment model.
Results
The main results showed that establishing community marketing sites along with extension services provided women farmers a secured marketing outlet for food production, plausibly associated with a decreased likelihood of a reduction in monthly expenditures on healthcare (12.7 percentage points), child education (19.4 percentage points), and transportation (51.5 percentage points) during the lean season. However, if farmers did not spend extra income generated from marketing on food purchases, it would be difficult to anticipate an improvement in food security.
Conclusion
Community marketing was devised to link women smallholders to the markets without conflicting with social and cultural norms for which women were responsive, and our research findings supported the claim that they benefited from community marketing participation. Therefore, government, NGO, or other extension providers looking for a culturally appropriate approach to address women farmers’ limited mobility may consider using or modifying community marketing.
... Under a gender-related lens a number of studies find that effects of extension services are positive, particularly when women are beneficiaries. Such studies explore the gender dimension both in terms of provision of extension services (Ragasa et al., 2013) and of potential differences in agricultural outcomes when extension services are targeted to women (Doss and Morris, 2000;Doss, 2001). According to the World Bank (World Bank, 2012), providing access to extension and advisory services to both women and men uniformly in SSA would substantially increase crop yields, although evidence shows that women have relatively lower access to extension and advisory services compared to men (Peterman et al., 2010). ...
Climate change and extreme weather shocks pose serious threats to a number of agricultural outcomes, including agricultural production, productivity, and income, especially when households depend heavily on this activity. Agricultural extension and rural advisory services are key instruments in promoting technical change, advancing agricultural productivity growth and, ultimately, improving farm livelihoods, and are expected to mitigate the negative effects of climate change and extreme weather shocks. Their mitigation effects, however, may vary depending on the sex of the recipient. This paper investigates the role of sex-disaggregated agricultural extension recipients in contexts where agricultural performance of farm households is affected by weather variability. To this aim, we match multiple rounds of panel microdata from the nationally representative, consumption-based Living Standards Measurement Study -Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA), collected in four sub-Saharan African countries, with remote sensing data on biophysical dimensions over a long-term horizon as well as year-specific weather shocks. To our knowledge, this is the first time that a micro-level dataset with individual-level information on agricultural extension services’ recipients has been assembled and examined to investigate the effects of extreme weather shocks and climate change. Applying panel data econometric estimators, the study finds that agricultural extension and advisory services translate into higher agricultural performance of farm households where women are also among the beneficiaries, as compared to non-beneficiaries and households where beneficiaries are men only. Moreover, these services can mitigate the negative effects of weather variability and climate change, controlling for country and time fixed effects as well as holding all other variables constant. These results call for national and international policies and interventions strengthening rural advisory services, especially targeted to women in settings where household livelihoods are predominantly agriculture-based and weather variability and shocks are expected to negatively affect farming activities.
... Women play vital roles in agriculture in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa (Blackden et al. 2003;Chen 2008), but their efforts seem not to match with productivity. For reasons of complex as well as heterogeneous households, dynamic gender roles within households, and complicated economic circumstances, African female farmers are less likely to adopt innovations (Doss 2001). By contrast, the seedball technology seems to be relatively adoptable by these female farmers because of low investment needs and use of locally available resources. ...
Pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R.Br.) is the major staple crop produced by subsistence farmers in the West African Sahel, but its panicle yield is low because of poor seedling establishment in low-nutrient soils. Seedball is a cheap seed-pelleting technique that combines sand, loam, seeds and optionally wood ash or mineral fertiliser as an additive to enhance early growth of pearl millet under infertile soil conditions. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of seedball technology on pearl millet crop establishment and panicle yield on-farm under Sahelian subsistence conditions. Over 2000 on-farm (2015–18) trials were conducted in 65 villages of the Maradi region in Niger. Conventionally sown and seedball-derived pearl millet crops were grown by using ‘farmer-optimised’ simple split-plot designs with three treatments: (i) farmers’ practice as control; and seedballs (2.0 cm diameter, made from 80 g sand + 50 g loam + 25 mL water + 2.5 g seeds as standard recipe) that contained either (ii) 3 g wood ash or (iii) 1 g mineral fertiliser (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium; NPK) as effective nutrient compounds. In 2016–18, participating farmers could opt for one of the seedball treatments. Panicle as well as stover yield data were collected and compared with respect to seedball type (wood ash vs NPK), sowing depth (shallow vs deep), sowing time (wet vs dry), weed management (complete vs partial), local soil type (texture range sand to loamy sand), cropping system (sole vs mixed), and farmer. Results showed that seedballs do not suppress seedling emergence. Seedball treatments produced fewer but longer and denser panicles. Wood ash-amended seedballs showed a higher panicle yield increase relative to their site controls than NPK-amended seedballs. However, the average panicle yield of NPK-amended seedballs was higher than that of the wood ash-amended seedballs. The treatment factors wet sowing, partial weeding, sole cropping and farmers showed higher panicle yield. The seedball technology increases pearl millet panicle yield by ∼30% in the Sahel; it is simple and based on local materials.
... The positive effect, of being male, on offfarm diversification is consistent with empirical evidence from Newman and Canagarajah (2000). Women's limited participation in off-farm employment in many rural African societies can be attributed to restrictions on their mobility (Benería 1979) and domestic responsibilities (Doss 2001). ...
This study provides evidence on factors that influence household labor
allocation decisions and demand for farm labor in Uganda. We estimated a monthly panel data to deal with potential heterogeneity or individual effect and tested for violation of the random effects modeling assumption that the explanatory variables are orthogonal to the unit effects. In addition, we estimated a random effects tobit model that involve explained variables with corner solutions. The results show that exogenous income did not affect off-farm labor supply by liquidity constrained households while liquidity unconstrained households increased the amount of labor supplied to off-farm activities and the amount of labor hired in. Farm size and education of household head improved labor productivity on farm and hence the amount of labor hired. Road
proximity improved both the hiring in and out of labor. The household being male headed improved the work hours in the nonagricultural off-farm activities. The findings imply that direct payments such as input provision to the poor may not improve labor employment unless backed with policies that remove bottlenecks and improve opportunities in the labor market. Instead, investment in micro credit institutions, road infrastructure, and education suited to smallholder production needs and policies that improve gender balance in terms of access to productive resources could help alleviate bottlenecks in labor markets and improve resource allocation between farm and off-farm sectors.
... Previous literature suggests that the adoption of agricultural technology in developing economy countries offers numerous benefits on both an individual and societal level. Farming technology can improve the well-being and quality of life for traditional farmers [9]. This is largely due to the fact that these technologies can enhance agricultural production quality and quantity, and in return reduce poverty among farmers [2,12]. ...
Widespread adoption of agricultural machinery for developing economy countries is commonly regarded as a fundamental component of pro‐poor growth. This study evaluates agricultural practices using a Human‐Systems Integration approach to more effectively adapt technologies to satisfy farmers’ needs. Six farms in Sudan, Africa were surveyed regarding their opinions towards using farming machinery, were then provided a tractor, and surveyed again after using the tractor for the planting season. The largest barriers for adoption were culture, security, and maintenance costs. However, the biggest challenges of their current practices were related to labor, safety, and profit margins; all of which could be addressed with machinery. Despite the initial resistance, all of the farmers were satisfied by their experience and expressed an even more accepting attitude from their children.
... By promoting a cooperative household farming approach together as a couple through a treatment, efficiency, and welfare gains from increasing cooperation between spouses which may be facilitated (Doss and Quisumbing, 2020). A second treatment in the field experiment aimed at reducing women's information disadvantage with regard to productivity enhancing technologies and practices for maize farming, which normally constrains women's effective participation in strategic agricultural decisions (Magnan et al. 2015;Fisher & Carr 2015;Doss & Morris 2000;Doss 2001;Lambrecht et al. 2016). If preferences of the male and female co-heads are not aligned, the co-head with asymmetric access to information may choose not to share it in order to allocate household resources towards his/her individual preferences (Fletschner & Mesbah 2011). ...
An increasing body of literature suggests that agriculture is “feminizing” in many low and middle-income countries. Definitions of feminisation of agriculture vary, as do interpretations of what drives the expansion of women’s roles in agriculture over time. Understanding whether, how, and why feminisation of agriculture is occurring, and finding ways to properly understand and document this process, requires effective research methodologies capable of producing nuanced data. This article builds on five research projects that set out to deepen narratives of feminisation of agriculture by empirically exploring the dynamics and impacts of diverse processes of feminisation—or masculinisation—of agriculture on gender relations in agriculture and food systems. To contribute to the development of effective research methodologies, the researchers working on these projects associate the insights they have derived in their empirical research with the methodologies they have used. They reflect on how their methodological innovations enabled them to obtain new, or more nuanced, insights into processes of feminisation of agriculture. A first insight is that the definition of ‘feminisation of agriculture’ is a decisive factor in determining the evidence we produce on the process. Second, the feminisation of agriculture should be understood as a nonlinear continuum. Research methodologies need to be capable of capturing dynamics, complexity, as well as multiple and diverse context—and time—specific drivers. Third, bias in data can arise from gender norms which mediate whether women are acknowledged by wider society as farmers in their own right. Such norms may result in significant underestimations of women’s roles in agriculture. This observation warrants a critical awareness that data used to measure or proxy aspects of feminisation of agriculture may reflect such biases. Finally, some research methodologies can be useful to identify and leverage entry points to support women’s agency and empowerment in processes of feminisation of agriculture.
... Women make up about 37 percent of the world's agricultural labor force with considerable range between regions and countries (ILO, 2020a). Women face gender specific constraints in accessing productive resources, particularly *increase soil organic matter by increasing no-till, perennial crops, erosion control, agroforestry *reduction of nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizer use *reduction of methane emissions from paddy rice *reduce deforestation * Controlled grazing and rangeland management *limit cropland expansion *reforest abandoned, unused lands *conserve/restore peatlands *improve wild fisheries management *improve manure/fertilizer management *adopt emission-reducing rice *focus on realistic options to sequester carbon in soils *practices that regenerate soil *reduce synthetic fertilizers and pesticides *increase agrobiodiversity *reduce negative impacts on freshwater and the ocean in terms of asset ownership and land rights (Deere & Doss, 2006;Doss et al., 2014) and access to inputs, technology and services (Doss, 2001;Doss & Morris, 2000;Peterman et al., 2014;Waddington et al., 2014), as well as higher time commitments to tasks that are essential for family survival such as gathering wood and water and child care. These factors lead to significantly lower productivity levels compared with men (Deere & Doss, 2006;O'Sullivan et al., 2014) and worse outcomes in food security (Brown et al., 2019) and poverty (World Bank, 2018). ...
Even prior to COVID, there was a considerable push for food system transformation to achieve better nutrition and health as well as environmental and climate change outcomes. Recent years have seen a large number of high visibility and influential publications on food system transformation. Literature is emerging questioning the utility and scope of these analyses, particularly in terms of trade-offs among multiple objectives. We build on these critiques of emerging food system transformation approaches in our review of four recent and influential publications from the EAT-Lancet Commission, the IPCC, the World Resources Institute and the Food and Land Use Coalition. We argue that a major problem is the lack of explicit inclusion of the livelihoods of poor rural people in their modeling approaches and insufficient measures to ensure that the nature and scale of the envisioned changes will improve these livelihoods. Unless livelihoods and socioeconomic inclusion more broadly are brought to the center of such approaches, we very much risk transforming food systems to reach environmental and nutritional objectives on the backs of the rural poor.
... Rural transformation has the potential to increase gender equality and women's empowerment, for example, by increasing their income generating opportunities, or by increasing agricultural efficiency and thus reducing their need to tend the family farm. However, much of the evidence suggests that adoption of new technologies and greater farm output may instead increase women's labour requirements, and women are also at risk through the transformation process of being left to tend the family farm or focusing on subsistence crops whilst male household members engage in new higher-value activities or migrate to urban centres (Doss, 2001;Slavchevska et al., 2016). As well as being detrimental to women's wellbeing, such exclusion can seriously hinder the transformation process, as limiting women's economic opportunities will restrict efficient allocation of labour. ...
... However, for gender, which could be considered a 'natural treatment ' (Mishra et al., 2017), selection based on unobservables is not an issue. The consensus in the literature is that gender productivity gaps are not due to any inherent differences between males and females, and that any gaps are expected to diminish or disappear once underlying differences in observed attributes are controlled for (Doss, 2001;Quisumbing et al., 2014). Consequently, our approach addresses bias from observables by seeking balance in the distribution of covariates between males and females prior to the frontier estimation. ...
The gender gap in agricultural productivity has been of ongoing interest to development policy and we revisit the subject in the context of groundnut, an important food and cash legume in Sub Saharan Africa. We address production technology differences between male and female managers of groundnut plots and examine the implications for the male–female difference in productivity. Using cross-sectional data, two recent stochastic meta-frontier (SMF) techniques are coupled with statistical matching to examine gender-related technology, managerial, single and total factor productivity (TFP) gaps. The results reveal different production technologies in use by male and female producers, and technology (6–7 per cent points) and managerial (3–5 per cent points) differentials, which translate into significant male advantages in land productivity (6.2 per cent) and TFP (15.3 per cent). A heterogeneity analysis provides valuable insights: Technology, managerial and TFP gaps, which favour male managers, decrease with age, years of schooling, exposure to extension, and use of hired labour and improved seeds; but increase with total cultivated area. Closing the productivity gap will require expanding female production possibilities through use of improved inputs and practices and enhancing managerial skill and know-how through extension.
... Gender was not (Schnurr and Addison 2017). While there is little quantitative research showing whether women are more or less enthusiastic in either their attitudes toward, or adoption of, GM varieties, some quantitative researchers worry that women remain disproportionately excluded from the benefits associated with GM crops due to factors that are correlated with gender (Doss 2001). One prominent concern revolves around asymmetrical access to information. ...
Since their release in the early 1990s, genetically modified (GM) crops have been lauded as a tool to redress stagnating yields and food insecurity among poor farmers. The potential for GM crops to alleviate poverty for farmers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) will likely hinge on their ability to enhance women’s overall well-being, yet there is little research that evaluates if (and how) the technology has such transformative potential. This article reviews the existing scholarship on this topic by grouping it into three strands: (1) the impacts of GM crops on labor processes, (2) gender and patterns of adoption, and (3) the consequences of GM crops for intra-household gender relations. Each area is characterized by contradictory findings, reflecting the diversity and complexity of gender relations in different contexts. Our review suggests that further research should build on mixed-method approaches that involve long-term interactions with households in order to generate robust and gender-disaggregated data that yield nuanced, context-specific analysis.
Smallholder farmers in lower-income countries often lack access to agricultural inputs, services, and markets. This holds especially for female farmers, with important negative implications for agricultural productivity, child welfare, and rural development. Contract farming is promoted as a means to improving farmers’ access to inputs, services, and markets – and thereby household income and welfare. Could contract farming also reduce prevalent gender disparities? And does it matter who within the household holds the contract? Here, we address these questions and explore patterns, drivers, and implications of women’s participation in contract farming. For this purpose, we use a unique dataset that is nationally representative of smallholder farmers in five African countries, which is the exception in this literature. Moreover, the data allow us to differentiate between different forms of women’s participation in contract farming, which is also an exception in this literature. We differentiate between female-headed and male-headed households and the gender of the contract holder. We find that participation rates among women are lower than those among men – but higher than previous case studies suggest. Our results regarding the importance of the gender of the contract holder for household living standards are inconclusive, for both male-headed and female-headed households, and there is great heterogeneity across countries. We conclude that the topic merits further exploration and discuss directions for future research and implications for policy.
There is a strong linkage between agricultural performance and economic growth in developing countries. However, the gain from agriculture disproportionately trickles down to the poor which can be partly reduced by addressing gender differences in production. Historically, the validity of gender statistics has been questioned as the way researchers and policymakers describe gender differences also affects how they perceive and address them. Amid these antecedents, we apply a meta-stochastic frontier to pooled cross-sectional population-based surveys that represent three decades (1987–2017) of the production history for twelve crops in Ghana to assess the dynamics of gender gaps in technology gaps and technical efficiency (TE). Results indicate that female farmers exhibit technology gap and TE scores of 25 and 76% while their male counterparts exhibit scores of 20 and 73%. The TE gap of 4% against male farmers has remained relatively steady over the three decades while the technology adoption gap against females has reduced from 18% in 1997/98 to 3% in 2016/17. All farmers operate at 60% of the potential possible given the overall crop production technology in Ghana. Over the three decades, the estimated crop production gap of 5.94% against females shifted to a gap estimated at 9.24% against males.
There is an urgent need for agri-food system transformation to achieve global sustainability goals. Innovations can play a key role in this transformation but often come with both sustainability synergies and trade-offs. One such innovation is agricultural mechanization, which is spreading rapidly in parts of the Global South and is high on the policy agenda in others. The rapid spread of mechanization is fundamentally changing the character of agri-food systems in the Global South, with both positive and negative effects. However, while some of these effects have been well explored, no study so far has systematically reviewed the sustainability synergies and trade-offs associated with mechanization, undermining necessary accompanying research and policy efforts. This review provides an overview of the progress toward mechanization across the Global South, identifies drivers and barriers, assesses sustainability synergies and trade-offs, and discusses options to maximize sustainability outcomes. The review is the first to holistically assess the potentials and risks of agricultural mechanization for the sustainable transformation of agri-food systems in the Global South, taking into account all pillars of sustainability. The review suggests that agricultural mechanization is needed to make agri-food systems more sustainable concerning various economic and social aspects, such as labor productivity, poverty reduction, food security, and health and well-being. However, there are also sustainability risks concerning environmental aspects such as biodiversity loss and land degradation, and economic and social concerns related to lacking inclusiveness and growing inequalities, among others. A wide range of technological and institutional solutions is identified to harness the potential of agricultural mechanization for sustainable agri-food system transformation, while at the same time minimizing the risks. However, more efforts are needed to implement such solutions at scale and ensure that mechanization contributes to agri-food systems that respect all pillars of sustainability.
Executive Summary The CGIAR began as an informal international collaboration of agricultural scientists to increase food production. In its first 30 years, the success of the CGIAR was concentrated among the founding four Centers-IRRI, CIMMYT, IITA and CIAT-first in wheat and rice and later in maize. Additional productivity gains were later made in cassava, potato, sweet potato, common beans, cowpea, and pigeonpea. The environmental centers-IWMI, ICRAF, CIFOR, Bioversity-and those in marginal production subregions-ILRI, ICRISAT, ICARDA-have been less successful in economic terms though their scientific contributions have been strong in some domains. The contexts of science and rural development have changed radically since the CGIAR was organized in 1971. The national and regional programs have become stronger, the global rate of information exchange has accelerated dramatically, and the rates of growth in irrigation and fertilizer use have slowed. The production environment has changed under the influence of climate change, notably through the effects of higher temperatures on crop yields. While scientific and development progress continues in the three major cereals and have been complemented by progress in the minor cereals, roots and tubers and the grain legumes, the system's efforts have become too diffuse and are less largely effective than in the past century. Efforts to revive the system's impact through various reorganizations have failed. The long crisis of the CGIAR A comprehensive review of the CGIAR (Lele, 2003) made major recommendations to increase the Centers' impacts. The major 2003 recommendations were to: (i) reverse the trend to restricted funding; this has not succeeded; (ii) increase funding for germplasm plant breeding and animal breeding; this was not done; and (iii) devolve some of the system's natural resources work to the national programs; this was not done. Beginning in 2009, a wide-ranging reform to improve the level and sustainability of funding, improve collaboration among scientists, and raise system effectiveness and efficiency was launched, under the heading of CGIAR research programs (CRPs). The CRP reform has generally failed. The CRP effort, and other reviews and evaluations over 30 years, have not improved the system's productivity and have not diversified its successes among commodities, regions, and production systems.
Extension plays very significant roles in enhancing agricultural production and community development initiatives in South Africa. However, sustainable agriculture, rural livelihood sustainability and food insecurity at household level are still of great concern and continue to be substantial challenges for the country’s rural dwellers. While a framework for reform was developed to revitalize extension services in the country, the framework falls short in addressing gender issues in extension services. Given the significant role women play in agriculture in South Africa, this oversight compromises the effective attainment of the goals of extension. The review was undertaken to gain insight into the level of involvement of women as agricultural extension advisors and the challenges they face. Drawing from relevant published works, the paper examines the degree to which women and men jointly participate as extension advisors, with reference to South Africa. This paper argues that increased participation of women as extension advisors can help reposition agricultural extension to more effectively facilitate programs to deliver better and more direct impacts on reducing hunger and ensuring human nutrition and food security.
Both women and men are involved in agriculture globally, although their roles differ significantly by region and are changing rapidly. Gender shapes access to productive resources and opportunities, with women having less access to many assets, inputs, and services across a wide range of contexts. These gender differences in resources and opportunities shape the agricultural sector across different types of farming systems.
This chapter critically reviews the rapidly growing empirical literature on gender and agriculture in low- and middle-income countries. We first deal with models and measurement, including household models of production and consumption, contrasting models that assume Pareto efficiency with those that do not. We discuss the implications of complex household structures, the neglect of jointness of household decisions, and incomplete risk-sharing within the household. We also discuss advances in measurement and data collection, focusing on measuring assets, decision-making, empowerment, and time use.
We then review empirical studies applying gender analysis to production, markets, and well-being outcomes. We review studies on gender gaps in agricultural resources, agricultural productivity, and the gender dynamics of technology adoption. We then examine studies of gendered participation in markets, including impact evaluations of interventions to improve gender equity in marketing schemes. We review the literature on how women's empowerment and gender equality affect nutrition outcomes, and how gender dynamics affect the takeup and impact of nutrition-sensitive agricultural programs. We conclude and identify areas for future work.
It is widely recognized that female farmers have considerably less access to productive assets and support services than male farmers. There is limited evidence of gender gaps in technology adoption and agricultural productivity after accounting for the differential access to factors of production between males and females. This study investigates the gender differences in the adoption of improved technologies and agricultural productivity in Malawi using nationally representative data collected from 1600 households and 5238 plots. We used a multivariate probit model to analyze the gender differences in the adoption of improved technologies, including intercropping, use of improved varieties, crop rotation and residue retention, manure use, and minimum tillage. To analyze gender differences in agricultural productivity, we used an exogenous switching regression (ESR) model and recentered influence function decomposition. We found that female plot managers were more likely to adopt intercropping and minimum tillage but less likely to adopt crop rotation and use improved varieties than male plot managers. The ESR model estimation results showed that female-managed plots were 14.6-23.1% less productive than male-managed plots. The gender productivity gaps also indicated that female plot managers had an 8.2% endowment advantage but a 23.1% structural disadvantage than male plot managers. The importance of structural effects in accounting for the gender productivity gap highlights the need for policies and agricultural development programs that consider the underlying factors shaping gender productivity gaps rather than focusing solely on agricultural production factors.
The ability of businesses to adapt effectively to climate change is highly influenced by the external business enabling environment. Constraints to adaptive capacity are experienced by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) across sub‐Saharan Africa, regardless of the gender of the business owner. However, gender is a critical social cleavage through which differences in adaptive capacity manifest and in Africa most entrepreneurs are women. We conduct a systematic review to synthesize existing knowledge on differential vulnerability of female entrepreneurs in Africa to climate risk, in relation to their sensitivity to extreme climate events and their adaptive capacity. We synthesize this literature using a vulnerability analysis approach that situates vulnerability and adaptive capacity within the context of the wider climate risk framework denoted in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. In doing so, we identify gendered barriers and enablers to private sector adaptation and suggest women entrepreneurs face a “triple differential vulnerability” to climate change, wherein they: (1) are often more sensitive to climate risk, as a result of their concentration in certain sectors and types of enterprises (e.g., micro SMEs in the agricultural sector in remote regions); (2) face additional barriers to adaptation in the business environment, including access to finance, technologies, (climate and adaptation) information and supportive policies; and (3) are also often concurrently on the frontline of managing climate risk at household levels. Since various forms of inequality often create compounding experiences of discrimination and vulnerability, we pay particular attention to how factors of differential vulnerability intersect, amplify, and reproduce.
This article is categorized under: Climate and Development > Social Justice and the Politics of Development
Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Institutions for Adaptation
This dissertation uses a mixed-methods approach to explore issues related to womens empowerment and small-scale irrigation from several different angles: conceptually, based on a literature review, qualitatively and quantitatively, based on a case study in Northern Ghana, and qualitatively, as part of a larger effort of development organizations to promote adaptation to climate change. The analysis relies on a conceptual framework that illustrates the linkages between small-scale irrigation and the domains of womens empowerment as well as the broader opportunity structure shaping these relationships. It then uses qualitative and quantitative data from the case study area to identify what aspects of womens empowerment are salient in this context and how the irrigation intervention influences outcomes for women. Finally, the dissertation draws lessons from a capacity needs assessment of development organizations to identify areas for strengthening the delivery of gender-sensitive programs. Thus, the main research questions addressed by this dissertation are: 1) What are the linkages between small-scale irrigation technologies/systems and dimensions of womens empowerment? 2) What aspects of womens empowerment emerge as the most salient in the context of Northern Ghana where small scale irrigation is practiced and modern technologies (motor pumps) are being introduced? 3) How does the introduction of small-scale irrigation technologies (specifically motor pumps) affect indicators of womens empowerment? 4) What are the gender-related capacity needs of development organizations working to promote climate change adaptation (of which small-scale irrigation is an important practice)? The findings in this dissertation suggest that there are many factors to consider in the design and dissemination of small-scale irrigation technologies to ensure that these are equitably distributed and that both men and women have the opportunity to engage in and benefit from irrigation. These include gendered preferences for the type of irrigation technology or system, the underlying socio-political environment shaping the barriers that men and women face, and implementation approaches. Moving beyond simply reaching women (that is, counting their participation in program activities) to benefitting and empowering women (increasing their well-being outcomes and expanding their ability to make strategic life decisions) requires knowledge of the local context and dedicated attention toward ensuring that outcomes for women are achieved, even if this means expanding activities and opportunities outside of agriculture. Thus, greater efforts are also needed to build the capacity of implementing organizations to deliver gender-responsive programs. Creating platforms, like stakeholder consultation processes or dialogues, for setting goals and sharing information, approaches, and lessons learned is one way to build this capacity. Integrating gender-sensitive research tools into strategy development, project design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of implementing agencies would also support the development of more gender-responsive irrigation interventions and would contribute to fill remaining research gaps on the gendered implications of alternative agricultural technologies and practices. While this dissertation provides some evidence on the impacts of motor pumps for small-scale irrigation on womens empowerment, this is only one of many types of irrigation technologies and approaches. More research is needed on the implications for womens empowerment of alternative irrigation technologies, systems, and dissemination tactics, including group-based and service-based approaches.
Advocates of the Green Revolution for Africa (GR4A) argue that the best way to address malnutrition is to incorporate smallholders into the global food economy via value chains involving the use of improved inputs, production technologies, and access to markets. Moseley and Ouedraogo critically assess these tactics using a feminist political ecology lens to analyze GR4A efforts in southwestern Burkina Faso which target female rice farmers. They examine the nature of the GR4A rice value chain, the degree to which a GR4A project is impacting the nutrition of participating women, and the influence of gender roles on GR4A rice project outcomes.
The Soybean Uptake and Network Survey was administered to a random sample of 832 smallholder male and female farmers in northern Ghana to explore gender and other factors related to soybean production. We investigated the effect of receiving a Soybean Success Kit (i.e., certified seed, fertilizer, inoculum) on soybean yield and income from soybean, controlling for factors such as gender. This analysis includes farmers who 1) resided in districts where Kits were distributed, 2) planted soybean in the past 12 months, and 3) for whom we had complete information for district and gender ( n = 371). When results were disaggregated by gender among Kit recipients, average soybean yield (ASY) for males was 108% and average soybean income (ASI) was 97% of that for females. When results were disaggregated by gender among Kit non-recipients, ASY for males was 142% and ASI was 147% of that for females. When results for males were disaggregated by whether the respondent received a Kit, ASY for male Kit recipients was 113% and ASI was 112% of that for male non-recipients. When results for females were disaggregated by whether the respondent received a Kit, ASY for female Kit recipients was 148% and ASI was 170% of that for female non-recipients. These results suggest that providing smallholder female farmers with access to low-cost (˂USD6) input bundles to which they customarily have little or no access can help eliminate the gender gap in agricultural productivity. These results may be applicable to other sub-Saharan Africa countries, where targeting smallholder female farmers as input bundle beneficiaries may positively impact agricultural productivity.
The term “feminization of agriculture” is used to describe changing labor markets that pull men out of agriculture, increasing women's roles. However, simplified understandings of this feminization persist as myths in the literature, limiting our understanding of the broader changes that affect food security. Through a review of literature, this paper analyses four myths: 1) feminization of agriculture is the predominant global trend in global agriculture; 2) women left behind are passive victims and not farmers; 3) feminization is bad for agriculture; and 4) women farmers all face similar challenges. The paper unravels each myth, reveals the complexity of gendered power dynamics in feminization trends, and discusses the implications of these for global food security.
Reviews a gendered approach to agriculture, focusing on the implications of labor differentiation, incentives, and struggles over access to resources for agricultural development. The paper then analyzes two approaches to understanding Africa's development crises: faulty incentives created in statist strategies and, an uncaptured peasantry; both approaches are oblivious to gender labor relations. Concludes with policy implications. -from Author
Decreasing soil fertility resulting from shortening of fallow periods leads to a falling productivity of labour which catalyses technological progress including the substitution of the hoe for the plow. A comparison of two villages in northern Ghana in different stages of population density-development reveals that many differences in agriculture can be viewed as part of an evolution of increasing population. The decreasing soil fertility seems to catalyze the development of methods to increase the productivity of land and labour even through relatively expensive techniques such as animal traction, and often without access to institutional credit. -from Author
Attempts to interpret a set of quantitative data gathered by questionnaire to elucidate the ethnographic context of the productive position of women in contemporary Luo society. The central issues considered are women's rights to land and other property and how this is related to women's role in agricultural production and decision making on the farm. Three main conclusions are drawn: 1) a trend is now discernable in which the individuation of land rights is likely to lead to a weakening of women's usufructory rights in land; 2) the land reform programme precipitates cleavage between women in households which hire labour as opposed to those which sell their labour to meet their cash needs; 3) at the family farm level those decisions on sale and disposal of land continue to be made by men while those concerning land use are made by women.-from WAERSA
Examines changes that have occurred in the nature of Kenyan rural households and the gender based division of adult labour. The reasons for the phenomenon of female-headed households is assessed by examining the overall socioeconomic forces in Kenyan society as well as specific conditions at the household level. Some aspects of the current social relations of production, factors of production, and production activities are examined among small farm households. Categorizes the smallholder householders into three types based on the marital status and sex of the household head, namely married men, married women and unmarried women. The data suggest that where a farm is headed by a married female, the husband is employed elsewhere while the wife maintains the holding, which has usually been inherited or claimed by a man. It appears that households headed by unmarried women are the poorest of the three types of farms; most do not produce a high value cash crop and monthly income from off farm sources is very small.-from WAERSA
This paper examines precolonial attitudes toward land and its use in two rural locations - Mutira in Central Province and Chwele in Western Province - and traces significant land tenure policies in the colonial period that proved detrimental to women's former usufruct rights as cultivators. It describes the relationship between a woman's marital status and her access to land as one of dependency and argues that unless present practices and policies are changed to encourage women to own land while at the same time restructuring agricultural priorities, rural women's economic position will be one of dependency. -from Author
This book attempts to explain the economic institutions, contractual arrangements and technological constraints found in rural land, labour and credit markets. Each of the four parts of the book covers one area where governments have historically intervened heavily: credit and land markets in rural areas, technological change in agriculture, and agricultural taxation and transfers. Each part of the book, in turn, consists of an overview chapter, one or more theoretical chapters, and case studies. The chapters suggest that formal models of the institutions in the rural sector provide a key to explaining why some rural development policies have failed. They emphasize information constraints and transaction costs, and some suggest mechanisms to alleviate obstacles to welfare-increasing policies in credit markets, land reforms and water rights systems. -M.Amos
This brief review of the emergence and use of the concept of "female-headed households', draws on a burgeoning literature as well as the author's own rsearch experience in Botswana and, currently, in Malawi. Both the contributions and the perils of the concept are set out on the basis of what we have learned so far, and some new conceptual and methodological directions indicated. -from Author
As fundamental problems in Africa’s food sector intensify under the strains of structural adjustment policies, African governments and international donors have become increasingly concerned about the political and economic implications of declining household food security and rising malnutrition (UNICEF, 1985; World Bank, 1988). As a result, we have witnessed a shift in the analysis of food problems from a focus on aggregate production and macroeconomic price policy (analyses which tend to advocate policies of primary benefit to large farmers and capitalist agro-enterprises) to a focus on the pro-duction and marketing problems of resource-poor smallholders, the overwhelming majority of Africa’s rural population. Pinstrup-Andersen, for example, argues that policies which improve the access of small farmers to land, modern technology, fertilisers, credit and markets can both raise aggregate food supplies and minimise scarcity pressure on food prices (Pinstrup-Andersen, 1989).
Correlates of decision-making in rural Kenyan [Kikuyu] domestic units are examined, with particular attention directed toward the contrast between ideal expectations and verbal reports of actual decision patterns. An interview schedule constructed in the field elicited ideal expectations from a systematically selected sample of twenty subjects [10 male, 10 female], while a second interview was used to elicit reports of actual behavior from all married women in the community [N=70]. Labor migration, homestead structure, phase in the domestic cycle, and control of valuable resources all have the power to override traditional expectation as determinants of decision-making patterns.
Women have played a significant role in traditional agricultural production technology in African societies. Because women's contribution was so central in both the agricultural division of labor and its reproduction, traditional struc-tures of resource allocation have provided them access to the basic factors of production in agriculture. Despite the fact that they remained socially subordi-nate to men, they participated in resource control, decisionmaking, and produc-tion. However in programs for improvement of agricultural technologies, women are seldom recipients of the benefits, although they no doubt are capa-ble of using them. In the cases cited in the literature where women either could not obtain the new technology or were adversely affected by it, underlying social, cultural, and economic conditions were primarily responsible. This was usually compounded by insensitivity in program design and implementation. Development programs can produce drastic changes within households by altering the perceived value of women's contribution and the traditional struc-tures of authority and resource allocation. Three major sets of interrelated concerns characterize the literature on this subject. First, development pro-grams can change the distribution of resource control by allowing those already favored in traditional and evolving structures to benefit disproportionally from growth. In the past this has largely been addressed as a problem between households. However, it is becoming increasingly evident that similar changes may also affect distribution of resources within households. Second, if changes This chapter is adapted from a presentation by the author at "Women and Agricultural Technology: The Users' Perspective," a seminar sponsored by the International Service for Na-tional Agricultural Research and the Rockefeller Foundation, held in Bellagio, Italy, March 1985.
Why do men and women adopt agricultural technologies at different rates? Evidence from Ghana suggests that gender-linked differences in the adoption of modern maize varieties and chemical fertilizer result from gender-linked differences in access to complementary inputs. This finding has important policy implications, because it suggests that ensuring more widespread and equitable adoption of improved technologies may not require changes in the research system, but rather introduction of measures that ensure better access for women to complementary inputs, especially land, labor, and extension services.
Drawing on sociological and economic research methods and fieldwork, we examine processes of long term and contemporary differentiation in two west Kenya sub‐locations. Our analysis is at variance with existing explanations which, by extrapolating from Central Kenya, have emphasised links between migration, land purchases and agriculture. We find that the interaction of economic and social processes with ecological constraints has resulted in labour migration promoting differentiation through its funding of investment in education. This process is not linear; there are historical ruptures in the processes of differentiation.
Data on the importance of women's role in agriculture in sub‐Saharan Africa and the social structures supporting the women's role are considered to clarify the interaction between the production systems and the social systems. The results are discussed with respect to their impact on the two‐sector ‘agriculture‐industry’ development models and their implications for future development. The paper concludes that women's role in agriculture supported past development but that the failure to recognise/enhance their activities is contributing to current problems with the food supply which can be overcome most effectively by working with rather than against the women.
Neoclassical models characterize agricultural households as unified production/consumptionunits in which labor is allocated according to principles of comparative advantage, income is pooled, and preferences for consumption and leisure are shared. This paper demonstrates that the assumptions and structure of both recursive and simultaneous agricultural household models are strikingly inconsistent with evidence from agricultural households in southern Cameroon and elsewhere in Africa. Fundamental revisions in the modeling of economic choice structures within agricultural households are required if men's and women's economic behavior is to be appropriately understood and reliably predicted. A Marxian analysis of the social relations of production within households can contribute to this process and can also indicate important new directions for agricultural policy analysis.
The UNDP Regional Program for Africa recognized the importance of an extensive study of women farmers in sSA and the problems they face in raising their productivity. This overview report presents the findings of this project. It is based primarily on four country studies - Burkina Faso, Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia. These studies document women's role in agriculture, identify and evaluate the key constraints they face in attempting to raise their productivity, and recommends measures to relieve these constraints. Women do most of the work on the farm and increasingly have become the key decision-makers. Despite this additional responsibility, however, women's access to agricultural inputs and support services has not improved commensurately. This results in a considerable loss in agricultural productivity and output. Agricultural development strategies have not adequately focussed on the clients. And, in sub-Saharan Africa at least, the clients increasingly are women. If sSA is to revitalize the agricultural sector and improve household food security raising the productivity of women farmers must be made the centerpice of agricultural strategy. -from Authors
The labor market literature in developing countries has seldom drawn on the studies of rural household income diversification. This paper draws on such studies to inform future study of the rural nonfarm labor market in Africa. The review of evidence provides some surprising departures from traditional images of nonfarm activities of rural households. Among the most striking is the dominant importance in the majority of case study areas of nonfarm wage labor (as compared to self-employment), of nonfarm sector earnings (as compared to farm sector wage earnings), and of local nonfarm earnings (as compared to migration earnings). The most worrying finding was the poor distribution of nonfarm earnings in rural areas, despite the importance of these earnings to food security and farm investments. This poor distribution implies significant entry barriers and market segmentation; it is probable that this will lead over time to an increasingly skewed distribution of land and other assets in rural Africa.
The author argues that the recent rapid decline in agriculture in Zambia is due to a combination of decades of mismanagement and ill-conceived policies under structural adjustment programmes, and tries to assess how these have affected the majority of the neglected small-scale farmers on whom food security so heavily depends. Attention is given to the nature and extent of recent agricultural mismanagement; the increase in poverty stemming from the disproportionate impact of adjustment measures on the lowest income strata and the failure of government programmes to alleviate the poverty of vulnerable groups; the effects of structural adjustment on gender relations and ultimately on food security; and changes in patterns of cropping, income, time allocation, and patterns of consumption. -G.P.Hollier
Attempts to assess the extent to which female-headed households in rural Malawi participate in adopting innovations introduced through rural development programmes. Discusses the inter- household differences in income between the categories of female-headed households and male-headed households, as well as within each category. It is suggested that the very limited adoption of agricultural innovations by female-headed households is closely associated with their low average income. The apparent apathy demonstrated by these households in respect of credit facilities reflects their inability to participate in the credit-cum- innovation programme because of their severe labour constraints and low average cultivated hectarage. Concludes by considering some of the remedial policies being developed by planners in an effort to improve the welfare of rural women.-from Author
Within a broad-based monitoring of agricultural change the use of intensive case studies is recommended. The latter evidence challenged the premises of the former as well as providing evidence. Material is based on the Volta River Authority in Burkina Faso 1977-79. -J.YockneyDept. Anthropology, Univ. of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA.
The repeated failure to design and appropriately target policies and interventions which address the needs of rural peoples in Africa suggests that something may be wrong with our understanding of the way that these peoples live their lives. Perspectives which focus on intra-household processes, and on gender issues in particular, represent useful advances in the way that the social and economic lives of Africa's rural peoples are conceptualized. However, this article questions the value of adopting development planning, policy and project approaches based on the rigid identification of `gender roles'. By reference to field research undertaken in northern Ghana, the paper aims to demonstrate that other social constructs, such as marital status and seniority, may be as important as gender in determining the roles and status of individuals in African rural societies. The article concludes by highlighting a number of practical implications of this finding in terms of the structuring of development-oriented research and the targeting of policy and interventions.
Traditional thinking in development has emphasized the ability of the peasant farm system to adapt or ”restructure” itself
during periods of intense population pressure. Adaptation typically takes the form of intensifying the exploitation of existing
land and/or expansion of the resource base. This paper takes issue with that assertion and suggests that in the context of
rapid social and institutional change, environmental degradation, and rampant increases in population, adaptation cannot be
relied on to maintain equilibrium. The basis for the recommendations made here is a survey of 192 women farmers in Ruhengeri
prefecture of Rwanda in east central Africa. Findings suggest that (1) Rwanda is experiencing serious demographic and environmental
problems; (2) the traditional mechanisms of adaptation can no longer be relied upon to bring about equilibrium; and (3) the
women of Rwanda are the conduits of change since they contribute the largest percentage of agricultural labor and have the
most responsibility for operation of farms and production of agricultural output. In light of these findings, it is clear
that special attention must be focussed on policy initiatives geared toward reducing population growth, facilitating innovation/information
diffusion, restructuring the extension service, and reducing gender biases.
Support for public sector agricultural research in developing countries is declining. At the same time, many donors feel that alternative institutions will be able to perform the functions traditionally reserved for the public sector. These alternatives include private sector initiatives, nongovernment organizations and farmer organizations, and highly publicized special projects in agricultural development. The logic of these alternatives is examined using evidence on maize research in Ghana. Although each of the alternatives offers contributions, and public sector research undoubtedly requires an overhaul, emphasis is placed on the necessity of continued suport to building strong public sector agricultural research capacity.
Since the early 1980s, development experts and donor agencies have agreed on the importance of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) aimed at ‘getting prices right’. Adoption of reforms were made preconditions for new loans or grants in many sub-Saharan African countries. In both Malawi and Cameroon, one such required reform was government's eliminating fertilizer subsidies to the small farm sector, previously used to increase the profitability of intensive agriculture while keeping food prices artificially low. The aim of this paper is to review fertilizer subsidy removal programs for their impact on farmers, who in sub-Saharan Africa are women. In theory, SAP programs should benefit women producers, because much emphasis is placed on renewing agricultural production and aligning farmgate prices with world prices. But in practice, will they benefit? Are SAPs gender-neutral and affect men and women equally, or merely gender-blind?
In sub-Saharan Africa there has been a shift over the past 20 years in consumption patterns from traditional coarse grains to non-traditional grains, mainly wheat and rice. This article examines the aggregate level trends in production and consumption of coarse grains and non-traditional grains. Household level data sets from urban and rural Burkina Faso and from Southwestern Kenya are used to identify the determinants of shifting consumption patterns. Results from the two countries suggest that the shift to rice in urban Burkina Faso and wheat in the form of bread in rural Kenya is related to the extent of women working outside the home. Results also suggest that women level factors are more important than household income alone in explaining the transition in consumption patterns.
Different definitions of female household headship have different implications for the economic status and welfare of members of female headed households (FHH). Using data from the Dominican Republic, this study compares four definitions of FHH: self-definition; no adult males (18–60) present; female earns over 50% of earned or of total income. The definitions are associated, but each defines a different group. Half of self-defined FHH contain adult males; half of those in which the woman is the major earner are self-defined FHH. In the Dominican Republic, female headship by any definition is not associated with lower income per capita, but sources of income are quite different: FHH are more dependent on transfers and gifts than wages; FHH defined by earnings are of higher income on average. Demographic composition of FHH is significantly different from male headed households MHH.
The pattern of maize seed development in Malawi demonstrates the importance of farmers' capacity to articulate their interests through collective action and institutions. Despite the vital significance of maize as a wage good in Malawi, limited effective demand for maize seed research prolonged the period of technical stagnation. Analysis of the institutional factors shaping the demand for maize seed research complements previous work on Malawi's political economy, the supply of seed technology and adoption, with implications for current political changes in that nation, the importance of farmers' organizations, and state commitment to agricultural research in sub-Saharan Africa.
This paper explores the transformation of customary tenure systems and their impact on women's rights to land in Africa. Emphasis is placed on the diversity of land rights within customary tenure systems, the different institutions and structures (e.g., inheritance, marriage) that influence rights to land, and the trend toward uniformity and increasing patrilineal control. With privatization, different rights to land have become concentrated in the hands of those persons (such as community leaders, male household heads) who are able to successfully claim their ownership right to land, while other persons (such as poor rural women, ethnic minorities) lose the few rights they had and generally are not able to participate fully in the land market.
Virtually all models of the household have the minimal implication that the equilibrium allocation of resources is Pareto efficient. Within many African households, agricultural production is simultaneously carried out on many plots controlled by different members of the household. Pareto efficiency implies that variable factors should be allocated efficiently across these plots. This paper provides a simple test of this weak implication of household models using an extremely detailed agronomic panel data set from Burkina Faso. I find that plots controlled by women have significantly lower yields than similar plots within the household planted with the same crop in the same year, but controlled by men. The yield differential is attributable to significantly higher labor and fertilizer inputs per acre on plots controlled by men. These results contradict the Pareto efficiency of resource allocation within the household. Production function estimates imply that about six percent of output is lost due to the misallocation of variable factors across plots within the household. The paper concludes with suggestions for a new model of intra-household allocations consistent with the empirical results.
The book was first published in 1970, as the first fully documented research into the changes affecting women throughout the Third World. It looks at land rights, marriage systems, industrialization and employment in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Makes the case that the change from traditional to modern economic systems hinders rather than helps women's participation in the labour force and that modernization widens the gap in levels of knowledge and training between men and women. -from Publisher